Why do we hate ourselves?
So as you may have noticed, I've been posting a lot about Tunisia the past week or so.
First, because I care deeply about this country, but also because I'm trying to understand how Tunisia actually works: structurally, historically and I think if more of us tried to understand, put words on the feelings, we'd blame less each other and start asking better questions.
I'm not writing this to confront anyone actually. I know most of us genuinely believe Tunisia is a sovereign country that makes its own choices. And you're right to be frustrated about the economy and that's real I won't tell you how to feel about it.
But there's something I want to talk about that goes deeper than the economy. I've been noticing in this sub, in conversations with peers in Tunisia, on the streets: the self-hatred, the Tunisia is the worst country on earth, the 'we deserve what we get', the dismissing of each other, the hating each other, the not wishing success on each other, the quiet belief that the west is better and we are less.
Where does this come from? Is this just frustration? Is this just a bad economy? Is it really the current president? Because I've looked at countries with much worse economies and they don't talk about themselves like this.
What is colonial mentality?
There's a clinical psychologist at the University of Sousse named Wael Garnaoui. He works with Tunisian migrants and families of missing migrants. The ones who disappeared at sea. And he documented something he calls "the trauma of immobility."
He describes how the visa system, that humiliating process every Tunisian knows, where you have to prove you'll come back to your own country, where you're guilty until proven innocent, where even people with good jobs and savings get rejected without explanation, how that system is not neutral bureaucracy. It's a continuation of colonial control. The same logic that colonial psychiatrists used in the 1920s when they classified North Africans as "impulsive," "lacking willpower," "halfway between the primitive man and the evolved Westerner" that logic is still embedded in how European consulates treat us today.
And what does that do to a person? To a generation? To a whole country? It teaches you that there is better than here. That you need permission to exist in the "real" world. That your country is the waiting room and the west is the destination.
Garnaoui calls it "the desire for the West" and he says it's not natural. It's produced. By 75 years of colonial rule that said: you are less. By 70 years of post-colonial systems that said: become like us. By a visa regime that says: prove you're not an animal that will run away.
And the result? The place that rejects you becomes the place you idealize. And the place you have becomes the place you hate. Not because it's bad but because it's not there.
The independence we never had
Tunisia gained independence in 1956. We celebrate it. Bourguiba symbolizes that . He did extraordinary things women's rights, education and modernization. I'm not here to erase that.
But the way we became independent matters. And it's different from how other countries did it.
Algeria fought for 8 years. 1.5 million dead. The FLN against the entire French army. When Algeria won independence in 1962, every Algerian knew: we did this. We bled for this. That collective experience of fighting and winning created something in the national psyche that still exists today. Algerians have many many problems but collective self-hatred is not one of them.
Vietnam fought for decades. First against France, then against America. They were bombed, poisoned with Agent Orange, devastated. And they never once concluded that the problem was them. They knew the problem was the system that was doing this to them.
Tunisia? Bourguiba negotiated. He was brilliant at it. But what did the deal look like? French stayed the language of education, business, and status. Arabic became the language of home and religion. The economic ties with France stayed intact. The education system remained heavily modeled on the French one. A hierarchy was built into the culture from day one. One example was that if you spoke French well, you're modern. If you don't, you're behind.
So i'm not saying those countries are better off or have it figured out, they each have their own serious problems. But the way they became independent left a different mark on the collective psyche and Tunisia never experienced the same kind of rupture with the colonial structure.
Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist working in Algeria during the liberation war, predicted what would happen in countries like ours. In 1961, he wrote:
"If it triumphs, the national revolution will be socialist; if it is stopped in its momentum, if the colonized bourgeoisie takes over power, the new state, despite its official sovereignty, will remain in the hands of the imperialists."
Written in 1961. And then look at what happened in Tunisia. The flag, the anthem, the president.
But the structure underneath stayed remarkably similar.
What happened after independence
1987: Ben Ali takes over with documented help from Italian intelligence (SISMI). Why? Partly because of Libyan oil pipelines that run through Tunisia. Corridor politics. Ben Ali keeps the same structure: secular, pro-Western, economically dependent on Europe.
2011: The revolution. The most hopeful moment in our history. But then what? The economic structure didn't change. The IMF came with conditions. The EU came with trade agreements. The debt stayed. The brain drain accelerated. And gradually, the hope collapsed.
Today: Look at what happens every time any Tunisian leader tries to push back against the structure: the economy gets squeezed harder, European media calls him a dictator, while newspapers start publicly discussing replacements, and then another round with another leader until he doesn't obey anymore. That's not normal. That tells you something about how much sovereignty we actually have.
The colonial mentality and what it actually looks like
Researchers have measured this. It's not a metaphor. There's a scale: the Colonial Mentality Scale that identifies four ways it shows up:
- Putting yourself down. "Tunisians are bad people." "We don't deserve better." ...
- Putting your culture down. "We grew up on hatred." "Our mentalité is the problem." Treating Tunisian identity as a defect rather than a product of a system.
- Looking down on people who are "less Western." This is the francophone hierarchy. The subtle (and sometimes not subtle) classism between those who speak French well and those who don't. Between the coastal cities and the interior. This is today slowly starting to change.
- Accepting the oppression as normal. "It's just capitalism." "It happens everywhere." The reflex to normalize the structure so you don't have to confront it.
Over generations. Through education, through media, through the visa system, through the economic structure, through 145 years of being told you're not enough.
About the immigration crisis
One more thing because it connects to everything. Before 2011, Libya managed much of the migration flow and supported African economies. When NATO destroyed Libya, all of that collapsed. The economies that Libya supported fell apart. The routes shifted. And Tunisia a small, broke, struggling country became the transit point.
Now the EU pays Tunisia to be Europe's wall. That's the deal. Money so we don't go bankrupt, in exchange for stopping people who are fleeing wars and poverty that Europe helped create. And we don't have the infrastructure, the budget, or the institutions to do it. So terrible things happen.
And the migrants who come through Tunisia? They come from places that are genuinely, unimaginably worse. Sudan. Eritrea. Mali. They've walked through the Sahara. They've survived Libya which survivors describe as hell on earth. And when they arrive here, some of us treat them like they're the problem.
That racism isn't random. It's the colonial mentality turned downward. When you've internalized the idea that there's a hierarchy Europe on top, you in the middle, you need someone below you. It's the same system, just reproduced one level down.
But those people are not our enemy. They're caught in the same structure we are. The only ones who benefit from us fighting each other are the ones who built the structure.
... I'm not saying don't be frustrated. Be frustrated. The economy is terrible, opportunities are disappearing, and the future feels uncertain. That's real. I'm not saying Tunisia is perfect. It's not. There are real problems that are our responsibility to fix. I just want to zoom in on the other part. I'm also not saying Europe is pure evil. There are good people out there, struggling with their own problems, many of them standing in solidarity with us and I'm well placed to know.
What I am saying is: the way we talk about ourselves is not an honest assessment. It's a wound that was inflicted over 145 years of colonial and post-colonial structures that taught us to see ourselves through someone else's eyes.
When you understand the structure and start actually taking it as a reality, when you see that a lot, if not most "Tunisian problem" has roots in decisions made in Paris, Rome, Washington, you stop hating yourself and others here and start seeing clearly.
Tunisia was never really given the chance to be fully sovereign. Not in 1956. Not in 2011. Not yet today. The forms changed protectorate, independence, 'democracy', whatever but the structure remained.
And the deepest part of that structure is not the debt or the trade deals. It's the voice in our heads that says: it's our fault. We're not good enough.
Maybe the first step is hearing that voice for what it is.
